The director of the first Human Centipede film – the one about a psychopathic doctor who sews three unwilling and unwitting captives together mouth-to-anus to make a sort of “centipede” — proudly declared that his film was “100% medically accurate.” That is, he found a doctor who was willing to say that if one were indeed to create such a centipede, the second and third segments (i.e., people) would be able to survive, provided that you supplemented their rather dismal diet with IV drips to give them the nutrition they were lacking.
This dubious claim to 100% accuracy came to mind today as I perused a post by the blogger who calls himself Dalrock, a manospherian nitwit with a penchant for pseudoscientific defenses of old-fashioned misogyny. In a post with the whimsical title “We are trapped on Slut Island and Traditional Conservatives are our Gilligan,” Dalrock argues that the best “solution” to out-of-wedlock births is some good old-fashioned slut shaming.
Here’s how he breaks down the (imaginary) numbers in a post that is “100% mathematically accurate” – which is to say, not accurate at all:
Assume we are starting off with 100 sluts and 30 alphas/players. The sluts are happily riding on the alpha carousel. Now we introduce slut shaming. It isn’t fully effective of course, but it manages to convince 15 of the would be sluts not to be sluts after all. This means an additional 15 women are again potentially suitable for marriage. This directly translates into fewer fatherless children. This also makes the next round of slut shaming easier. Instead of having 99 peers eagerly cheering her on her ride, each slut now has 15 happily married women shaming her and only 84 other sluts encouraging her. After the next round this becomes 30 happily married women shaming the sluts, and only 69 other sluts cheering them on, and so on. This process continues until all but the most die hard sluts are off the carousel. You will never discourage them all, but you can do a world better than we are doing today.
Why not shame the fathers as well, while we’re at it? Dalrock explains that this just doesn’t make good mathematical sense:
Start with the same base assumption of 100 sluts and 30 players. Now apply shame to the players. Unfortunately shame is less effective on players than it is on sluts, so instead of discouraging 15% of them (4.5) in the first round, it only discourages three of them. No problem!, says the Gilligan [the social conservative], at least there are now three fewer sluts now that three of the evil alphas have been shamed away, and all without creating any unhappy sluts! But unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. The remaining 27 players are more than happy to service the extra sluts. They are quite maddeningly actually delighted with the new situation. Even worse, the next round of player shaming is even less effective than the first. This time only 2 players are discouraged, and one of the other 3 realizes that his player peers are picking up the slack anyway and reopens for business. This means in net there are still 26 players, more than enough to handle all of the sluts you can throw at them.
Well, there’s no arguing with that!
Seriously, there’s no arguing with that, because it is an imaginary construct with only the most tenuous connection with how things work in the real world. “But … MATH!” doesn’t really work as an argument here, since human beings don’t actually behave according to simplistic mathematical formulas.
Film critic note: While the first Human Centipede film offered little more than a workmanlike treatment of a fantastical idea, the recently released sequel, which details the attempts of a deranged Human Centipede superfan to take human-centipeding to the next level, is actually sort of brilliant. If you like that sort of thing.
doh – coined the term survival of the fittest, and applied it to social as well as evolutionary thought, I meant. “Social darwinism” was a later term applied backwards. But the gist! The gist is gisty!
zhinxy: Bryan was against eugenics, and SD was being used as a tool by eugnecists.
Indeed SD was! I meant that looking at the guy who got the ball rolling, it’s interesting in what a cesspit it ended up! Ah, so Bryan was definitely against eugenics then? I’m not sure from what I remember of Gould but I may be misremembering some other things I’ve read on Bryan and eugenics that wasn’t quite as Darwinist. – Not encouraging the morally delinquent to breed, and etc, common in anti-evolution prohibition circles. Could definitely have my brain muddled there.
Alright, let’s all do a test shall we? Two columns,
One: “human rights opposed by Ron Paul”
Two: “human rights supported by Ron Paul–and presumably opposed by his critics here, since these are not sufficient reasons to support his Presidential campaign, or to vote for him.”
One:
1) “right to abortion” (baby killing inside the womb)
2) “right of gay “mariage” (recognised on the Federal level)
Two:
1) the right to presumption of innocence
2) the right to Habeas Corpus–recently suspended through so-called “Patriot Act” supported by many of the champions of rights in the first category above.
3) right to trial by jury–including jury nullification–the right of a duly empanelled petit jury to judge the law (and its application) as well as the facts of the case.
4)the right to keep and bear arms–What did the third President once say about the “tree of liberty must be watered every generation with the blood of tyrants and patriots”
5)the right to sound and honest money, and the right NOT to be ripped off by debt-pyramiding governments, banks, and corporations
6) The right to travel unimpeded and unmolested both inside and outside the United States, without being treated by police or border guards as a potential terrorist!
7) The right to the value of one’s savings, so that your savings are not inflated to pay off the polticians’ and bankers’ debts
8) The right to keep the full value of what one has earned, and an prompt and total end to the theft, injustice, and slavery of the income tax.
9) The rigth to the security of one’s home,property,and posessions, without being terrorized–and sometimes brutalized– by SWAT-team type police raids searching for evidence of “drugs”, money laundering, “terrorism”, substances banned by the FDA, so-called “illegal” firearms, those who practice polyamorous marriage who are victmized by very frequent assaults against the civil rights of e.g. fundamentialist LDS members, and anything else the government wants to accuse you of, and can’t get evidence any other way!
10) the right to choose the medical, dental, pharmaceutical, nutritional and other health related care and advice, with no let or hindrance from “Big Brother”. The rights to be free from being poisoned by government-approved and issued “vaccinations” and floride pollution.
11) The right of the passangers boarding an aircraft (or other traveller’s conveyance) to be free at all times from being groped, pawed, molested, and to keep one’s wife and children from such abuse by Federal TSA perverted goons!
12) The right to transparency and accountability of the government on all levels. Why are there STILL documents many decades after the fact regarding the JFK and Bobby Kennedy assassinations, the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” of 1964, the Castro seizure of power in Cuba in 1959– both prelude and aftermath–the prelude and much of the aftermath of Pinochet’s seizure of power in Oct 1973, and pertaining to other questions regarding events that transpired decades, if not generations, ago? Declassify those documents now!
For more about Ron Paul, firstly read his books, and secondly go to e.g. RonPaul2012.com or http://www.dailypaul.com
I don’t know about everyone else, but the last time I went to school, (2)<(12).I think that Ron Paul deserves serious consideration if only because there is little that you can say against him which doesn't apply to the others, WITHOUT his ironclad lifetime committment to human rights as outlined (all too briefly) in the comparative list above).
I don't know about manboobzers, but I suspect that as a rule, the non-aggression axiom basic to libertarianism may apply to the protection of the unborn baby NOT BEING KILLED at least as credibly and persuasively as the counter arising from the (alleged) soverignty over her body by the mother. Does the mother's "ownership" of her body, and presumably the baby inside her, allow for killing the baby on her whim? If so, that is a very eccentric application of the non-aggression axiom indeed! Just thought I would mention this, since maybe the "right" to abortion (contra Dr. Ron Paul) isn't as airtight as some of its advocates imagine! Gay "marriage" is frankly to bizarre an idea for me to have an opinion about, although I think that as a general rule, the State, on any level, probably has no right to interfere with ANYBODY'S pairing. Disapproval, if any, can take place through non-state and non political channels, such as social ostracism, public ridicule, and so on. Whie Ron Paul give the States–as opposed to the Federal government–authority in this area, I suspect strongly on the basis of his other writings that he agrees with me here, and that no political role in marraige or family is justified.
@DKM: You do realize that Washington state has embedded Roe v. Wade in its Constitution (forget when , but was when a lot of challenges are being made)? It’s not alone.
All sorts of dumbasses think if Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortion will suddenly become illegal, forgetting that not all states are dominated by fundamentalist evangelical dickbiscuits like the ones in MIssouri .
On another level, the erosion of women’s access to medical care caused by medical schools not teaching abortion techniques, terrorists (white Christian terrorists) closing down clinics offering a range of services, and recent state legislative moves makes it almost unnecessary to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I don’t see why I have to choose either or as your list implies, but I say again, thinking that only YOUR human rights should be respected is the move of a misogynistic, narrow-minded, narrow-sighted, twit who refuses to believe that people who are not like him have any rights.
Have you jumped into that river yet?
Meller, I will respond in detail to the above later tonight. There’s a lot I think you’ve left out. As for reading his books and visiting his website, I’m an involved libertarian. There’s no way to escape Ron Paul. No. WAY. People I hate, like, sorta know, love and respect get the Paul Bug, seasonally, and I think I know my way around his positions by now.
as a rule, manboobzers or no, the non aggression axiom as applied to abortion is deeply divisive. And you know that. I will go into my libertarian position later, and why I think seeing it as a state’s right issue is troubling.
I will add that you left out immigration, a huge human rights issue, and one where even more than his abortion stance, I find Paul to be out of sorts with ethical libertarianism.
Also, regarding some of your arguments as to why I should be so eager to throw aside my “silly not important to real libertarian” issues, such as women’s privacy and health and autonomy, because of what’s coming, I note that I have been a conspiracy theory follower for ages. But those aren’t the sites where I get my news, for heaven’s sakes.
Alex Jones, to pick one example you used, is an incredibly entertaining conspiracist, and I’m sure he’s a fairly decent human being, from all I’ve heard. But whatever good points he has drown in his New World Order conspiracy theory.
Believe me, it’s not “trust the government and believe everythign is happy” Vs. NEW WORLD ORDER ILLUMINATI
Keeping on with Alex Jones, in particular, and his pet theory –
The Bilderbergers are a group of elites meeting in secret elite rich powerful people meetings to discuss elite rich powerful bullshit, and many of them are high placed enough that their rich powerful ideas get played out. They have a ridiculous amount of pull, and most of them really did nothing to earn it. Not very democratic. Certainly not very anarchist. My stomach does turn.
But they are not plotting to kill 80 percent of us for New World Order environmentalism. They are not part of a larger group besides “Rich, Powerful, Highly Placed Fuckers” that we have to worry about. Rich, Powerful, Highly Placed Fuckers are bad enough without thinking they put cancer viruses in our vaccines, or secretly worship Satan together.
These things aren’t happening, so putting aside my right to choice, for example, isn’t that pressing in order to defeat being rounded up into fema camps and gassed.
Things are bad enough without being a conspiracy theory horror show.
That is allowed to factor into how much support I throw behind Paul.
counter arising from the (alleged) soverignty over her body by the mother. Does the mother’s “ownership” of her body, and presumably the baby inside her, allow for killing the baby on her whim?
REALLY! Meller. Even pro-life libertarians usually admit there’s definite personal sovereignty here, definite bodily ownership, and only try to argue that the fetus has a right to not be aggressed upon that may override it. Enough with your beating about the bush as to women’s personal sovereignty. It’s not alleged, or you are not a libertarian.
The others, things like Jury trials (and the right of the jury to come to any verdict they like; though that doesn’t equal quite the same thing as asking a jury to say the law in question isn’t the law/isn’t legal). Things like border security (tell me, how does Ron Paul support people being allowed to “travel freely” in other countries? What, were he president, could he do to arrange for unimpeded travel in say, Saudi Arabia?), aren’t things which really touch on the issue. Securing a border against things which we don’t want coming in (say invading armies, or lead-painted toys, or melamine-tainted food) are useful.
Sound money? We have that. You don’t like it, because it doesn’t meet your fetish for GOLD!, but it’s sound. Go to any person and ask them if the will accept a $20 bill. The answer will be yes. Ask them if they will swap $10 for a six-pack of beer. The answer will be yes. Ask them if they would be willing to refuse an offer of 10,000 for a beat up 1995 Corrola, the answer will be yes.
Take it to the hospital, and see if they refuse it for their services. See if you can find a gas station that won’t take your paper money for gas, or oil, or a candy bar.
The money is sound, it’s just not gold.
Keeping the “full value of what one has earned”. Right. Stop me from taking your stuff, if you don’t pay taxes. No taxes, no cops, or firefighters, or water depts, or rights of way for power lines.
Want to bet I can’t establish an, “insurance company”, which will promise to keep your house/barn/car from suddenly bursting into flame? Want to bet that if you don’t give me (or someone like me) some of your gold, that house/barn/car won’t burst into flames?
Your list of “rights” pretty much boils down to, “The right to be comfortable, if rich, and exploited if not rich.”
Moreover, Paul, nor any like him, can’t deliver. Politics is, sadly, the art of the possible, and a game of compromise. Paul isn’t able to convince them to do it his way. Look at Healthcare… the majority of people want single payer (medicare for all). It’s not happening. Paul is against it. Never mind that healthcare, as a for profit industry, kills people. Never mind that costs go up, coverage goes down. Never mind that it’s a huge drain on the economy; as is, with huge amounts of money leaving circulation (where they could be being spent on goods/sevices/reasearch/etc.). Nope. The folks who have the money get to sway the system and Paul isn’t against that.
Want to see a better nation…. work on campaign finance reform. Make it so that one need not have millions of dollars to get a job that pays 200,000 a year. See to some actual socialism (a bit of income levelling, and no real worries about medical care makes a nation of entrepenuers,because they aren’t going to be bankrupt/dead if they get sick).
But not you. You want the 1880s again. rapacious businesses, and lackadaisical protections against them.
Pinkertons and Tammany Hall; Yee-Hah.
Grow up.
Wow, you guys actually took the time to read and decipher DKM’s convoluted two-column schema.
zhinxy: Of course it’s alleged. Women are property, either of their fathers/brothers, or their husbands, or (should they forgo the loving embrace of a personal master), the society at large.
As such any claim they might make to personal sovreignity is questionable, if not outright nonsensical, because Meller believes (deeply) in Peace and Freedom.
Katz: It’s not that hard. Apart from some minor variations for the Bilderbergers and the Fluffy-Kitty women, his stuff is pretty much boiler-plate Paulenista.
At this point I can almost write it, so deciphering it is more like picking up a missal, to see which feast day it is.
“At this point I can almost write it, so deciphering it is more like picking up a missal, to see which feast day it is.”
You’re so geeky, Pecunium. <3
That’s easy–the day before the first Sunday of Lent. Christmas Sunday=long advent!
“Alright, let’s all do a test shall we? Two columns,
One: “human rights opposed by Ron Paul”
Two: “human rights supported by Ron Paul–and presumably opposed by his critics here, since these are not sufficient reasons to support his Presidential campaign, or to vote for him.” ”
Illustrations of how Meller’s thought process is fundamentally flawed.
One: Since Paul is his preferred candidate, he begins by assuming that everyone should be voting for Paul, and that they must explain to him why they are not, since everyone should automatically go along with his wishes.
(Also Two: Meller is completely igoring any other reasons that people have actually given for not supporting Paul, and is happily twisting their words to fit the explanation that he prefers.)
Cassandra: Meller is an authoritarian. He has convinced himself that he is an Authority, ergo all intelligent people will agree with him.
Those who don’t are, ispo facto not intelligent.
If he were more clever you could use him as an exmplar for Fallacy 101, but his versatility is limted to some limited forms of Ad Hominem, No True Scotsman, Question Begging and False Dilemmas.
He does like to spice it up, sometimes, with rhetorical excursions about the happy days to come (sexbots and murder), and the present pleasures of dolls, gloating over women in pain and fantasies of drowning kittens to please feminists.
But he doesn’t like to admit to those too often, nor to his more viscious Gorean desires; papering it over with platitudes about positive reinforcement being preferrable to phsyical punishment. He won’t rule the latter out, but only when women “deserve” it.
Did you notice how on another thread he claimed that it’s our fault that he upvoted that horrible Reddit post, because since we’re so mean to him he no longer has any reason to be nice? It’s the selfish logic of the innately abusive person, on levels both micro and macro.
@CassandraSays, I think he said he had nothing to lose by upvoting. Which makes even less sense, because what could he possibly stand to lose by up- or down-voting a comment on a blog? Besides his self-respect.
Ah, that was it. But we’ve all made it clear that we hated him ever since he arrived, so why did it take this long for him to realize he had nothing to lose, and what is it he intended to win in the first place? Perhaps he thought he could transform us into fluffy submissives over the internet by haranguing us about it?
They are-very rarely do you have anyone who is completely evil or completely good.
Where do you people imagine that only White Protestant heterosexual Americans will enjoy constitutional rights in Ron Paul’s America?
Every one of the rights that I have cited benefits EVERY American, regardless of race, gender, sex “orientation”, age, and so on…
Everyone, completely regardless or race, sex, nationality, religion, or anything else, benefits from a money whose value doesn’t evaporate year by year!
Given the behavior of modern cops, both Feds and locals, and the even worse behavior of DA’s and public prosecutors, any limitation on their power–such as jury nullification–would benefit all citizens, but benefit nonwhites most of all. While we are on the subject, it is true that sometimes defendents in lynchings were exonerated, but how many times were fugitive slaves rescued because juries refused to uphold fugitive slave laws? Jury nullification, like the law itself in many ways, cuts both ways!
People, again of all races, creeds, and sexual orientations, benefit enormously when they can call or e-mail without the monstrosity in DC treating us as “terrorists” who are presumptively guilty, merely by calling or posting to the internet!
People of all backgrounds, genders, and races will inevitably benefit from not being groped, pawed, and insulted by drooling TSA goons “protecting us” from “Islamofascism”. Again, Ron Paul’s “rights” are in inclusive ones, YOURS are applicable by definition only to a small number of people, and probably only enforceable by government action in any event!T
It is your notion of rights which is exclusive and group specific. How do non-pregnant women, much less men, benefit from abortion rights (assuming that there is an actual right to kill an innocent baby inside the womb).
How do heterosexuals BENEFIT from gay “marriage”, whether it is upheld by the Federal government or not?
Free market medicine and its benefits, (Ron Paul’s rights) applies to all, but his critics want “single payer”–Medicare for All. And the money to service healthcare for an aging population funding a set of programs already TRILLIONS of $$$ in the red in unfunded–and unfundable–liabilities, is going to be paid for HOW?? Please don’t say let the Federal Reserve–or the Treasury just “print it up”. How will the “right to healthcare” be realized when a bottle of asprin starts to cost 500 dollars? 15,000 dollars? 120,000 dollars…
This may be your idea of workability Pecunium, but it isn’t mine, it isn’t Ron Paul.s and it probably isn’t even too many Europeans’ today, with their monetary and economic troubles!
I am “ignoring your reasons for people not supporting” Ron Paul, Zhinxi. And you have been ignoring my reasons for other people supporting him!
The same people who talk about the “rapacious businesses” of the XIX century were also most deceptive about matters like prohibition and eugenics, to say nothing of foreign affairs! They lied about the origins of the Spanish American war, they lied about “making the world safe for democracy”, they lied about the income tax “taxing only the rich”–the 1914 Income Tax return had a maximum rate of (I believe) 10% for income over Ten MIllion dollars per year (what that income would be worth today is anybody’s guess)–and guess who pays most of the income taxes since then?
A natural question, or assumption, is could they be LYING about your so-called “rapacious businesses” as well? Look at the essays in Capitalism and the HIstorians, ed by F.A. Hayek. You’ll see an awful lot of fiction misrepresented as fact, along with a lot of ‘fact” of doubtful–VERY doubtful–reliability! I don’t know about you, P. but if people are repeatedly wrong about, or deceptive about so-called “facts” retrospectively, then such data is not worth very much. Pinkertons and Tammany Hall–both creatures, not of free enterprise, but the State, in every sense. How “progressive” activity corrected or even ameliorated their abuses is doubtful indeed, and for every problem they solved at a local or municipal level, they created worse ones at the national level! Rather REGRESSIVE, if you think about it, not “progressive” at all!
This doesn’t even count the barbarity that the governments of the period inflicted upon people who defied them, or got in their way. Who will protect us from our protectors?
DKM: Where do you people imagine that only White Protestant heterosexual Americans will enjoy constitutional rights in Ron Paul’s America?
I assume you mean why.
One reason: I live in Texas.
I’ve seen the TExas model.
AND it’s definitely all privileging WASP men/corporations over everybody else.
If this country elects another Texan as president, I may seriously look into immigrating.
It is your notion of rights which is exclusive and group specific. How do non-pregnant women, much less men, benefit from abortion rights (assuming that there is an actual right to kill an innocent baby inside the womb).
Speaking as a non-pregnant woman, I benefit because I am able to have a loving, intimate relationship with my partner without being terrified that one broken condom could force me into a pregnancy that would currently be physically unsafe for me. But even beyond the direct benefits to women of childbearing age, everyone benefits from women being able to choose when or if they will have children, in a whole lot of very obvious ways. If a family has two children and can afford to feed two children, everyone in that family benefits from not being forced to support a third or a fourth or a fifth, since, y’know, they don’t starve. Every family who counts in whole or in part on a woman’s income (i.e. the vast, vast majority of families) benefits from knowing she will not be in danger of having to miss work due to an unwanted pregnancy (and every company that employs those women benefits there, too, not to mention every customer who depends on those companies). And, of course, every man who has a mother or a sister or a daughter or a wife or a girlfriend or a female friend benefits from knowing their loved ones will never be in a position where they will be left to die if they suffer an ectopic pregnancy or any of the other common potentially fatal complications of pregnancy. (I suspect that one doesn’t seem like a benefit to you, but I assure you that the overwhelming majority of men actually don’t think the idea of the women in their lives dying is funny! Because most men are decent people and not pathetic scumbags!)
How do heterosexuals BENEFIT from gay “marriage”, whether it is upheld by the Federal government or not?
Right off the top of my head? Heterosexuals own or work for wedding planning businesses. Heterosexuals own or work for businesses that sell wedding gowns, tuxedos, and formal attire. Heterosexuals own or work for florists. Heterosexuals own or work for chapels, reception halls, caterers, travel agencies, airlines, hotels, and all the other businesses that directly benefit from weddings. Duh.
Heterosexuals also, y’know, have friends and family members who are gay, and are happy to see their friends and family members be able to marry the people they love, but even if we strip away all the emotional aspects, it is absolutely unambiguous that more couples being able to get married = more people spending money on weddings, which is good for everyone who works in related businesses as well as good for the economy in general.
Ithiliana
Granted one can understand why, after Bush I and Bush II, you may feel that way about Texans. But, didn’t Texan Lyndon B. Johnson sign the 1964 Civil Rights act into law, and follow this up with e.g. 1965 Voting Rights and 1968 ‘Fair Housing’ Act? That Texan did as much as anybody to implement and fulfill the very civil rights vision that you seem so enamored of.
And although Bush I and Bush II were both all-round jerks, they were not necessarily bigots! Their asinine policies, from war in Iraq to war-on-drugs, from Americans for Disabilities Act to No Child Left Behind or prescription drug Medicare reform inflicted great damage on almost everyone in our society, and they were both, to put it mildly, stupid, but they were not bigots!
Ron Paul differs from them as much as Mozart differs from your nearest ‘punkrock” band or as much as Rembrandt differs from Picasso! In a comparison more understandable to manboobzettes, Ron Paul differs from the Bushes–and other GOPers the way that Betty Friedan differs from Helen Andelin!
If RP was as rotten as youall say he is here, the Stupid Party–the one that gave you the likes of the Bushes, to say nothing of Palin, McCain, Romney, Perry, or Gingrich would not be attaking him as much as you are! The fact that the party of Bush, McCain, Perry etc is so militantly anti-Paul must say something!!
“The fact that the party of Bush, McCain, Perry etc is so militantly anti-Paul must say something!!”
It says that they’re opportunists, and they don’t think Paul can get elected.